The Ipod, Now A Great Teaching Tool For Temple Professor

 
by KYW's Paul Kurtz

A Temple University cardiologist and professor of medicine has found the Ipod to be a valuable teaching tool.

Dr. Michael Barrett says he used to lecture and play the sounds of a heart murmur in class. He then switched to burning the sounds on CD, until his students gave him a better idea:

"I ran into a bunch of them and said, 'Are you guys listening to your CDs?'  And they said, 'Dr. Barret, nobody listens to CDs anymore. We uploaded it to our Ipods.' So I went out and got one and the students were right. It's really ideal for this kind of auditory skill."

Barrett says he's amazed at how the Ipod has accelerated the learning process: 

"It used to take months to years to get good at this. In fact, only cardiologists would routinely score 80 percent when you tested them on these murmurs. We can condense that down to three to four hours."

This week, Dr. Barrett is showing colleagues his groundbreaking technique at the American College of Cardiology meeting in New Orleans.